


Prologue

by Cerdic519



Series: Elementary 366 [1]
Category: Sherlock - Fandom, Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms, Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle
Genre: 21st Century, Bacon, Chocolate, Coffee, Doctor Who References, England (Country), F/M, Fan-fiction, Gay Sex, Ireland, Johnlock - Freeform, London, M/M, Married Couple, Minor Character Death, Northumberland, Sex Toys, Slow Burn, Sussex, Victorian, Writing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-18
Updated: 2019-12-18
Packaged: 2021-02-26 09:08:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 13,634
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21847210
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cerdic519/pseuds/Cerdic519
Summary: The Complete Cases Of Sherlock Holmes And John Watson. All 366 cases plus assorted interludes, hiatuses, codas &c.2019/1874. All the stuff that sets the story up. We meet Doctor St. John Watson-Holmes (descendant of John) and his insatiably horny husband Shere (descendant of Sherlock, so no change there either!), and discover how they came out with this latest mega-canon. Then it's back to 1874 to meet their ancestors, the people around them in Late Victorian England (including the enigmatic Mr. Sherrinford Holmes) and a look at a very different world before the crime-solving begins.
Relationships: Shere Watson-Holmes/St. John Watson-Holmes, Sherlock Holmes & John Watson, Sherlock Holmes/John Watson
Series: Elementary 366 [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1555741
Comments: 12
Kudos: 18





	1. Contents

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lyster99](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lyster99/gifts), [cemm](https://archiveofourown.org/users/cemm/gifts).



> This series is complete and will be updated daily.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Contents page.

** 2019 **

**Elementary: Buried In The Shed**  
by Doctor St. John Watson-Holmes, M.D.  
_John Watson's descendant gets shafted by Sherlock's in a blue shed_

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** 1874 **

**Mr. Sherlock Holmes, Esquire: An 1874 Q &A**  
by Mr. Sherlock Holmes, Esquire  
_The immodest detective as he was in MDCCCLXXIV_

 **Mr. John Watson, Esquire: An 1874 Q &A**  
by Mr. John Watson, Esquire  
_The doctor-writer as he was in MDCCCLXXIV_

 **Dramatis Personae**  
_Who was who in MDCCCLXXIV_

 **1874 And All That**  
_What was what in MDCCCLXXIV_

 **Elementary: Village Life**  
by Mr. Sherrinford Holmes, Esquire  
_Reflections on a typical, quiet(ish) Sussex village_

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	2. Elementary: Buried In The Shed

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 2019\. How 'Elementary 366' came about, courtesy of the great-great-great-grandsons of the dynamic duo. This is set in 'Elementary', the cottage in the village of Chuffingden, Sussex, in which a certain famous consulting detective and his medical friend spent their quiet, refined, genteel retirement. And I almost kept a straight face during that last sentence!

_[Narration by Doctor St. John Watson-Holmes, M.D.]_

So here I was again. Sheriff Shere had impaled me on the Shredder and was walking me around our shed (yes, the blue one with a flashing light on the top; I could see where 'someone' got _that_ side of his character from!). I had few brain cells left functioning but even I eventually realized that he had stopped for some reason. He had paused his dismemberment of my insides in front of the long mirror that he loved (the vain bastard!) and I stared blearily at our reflections. Me, a blond five foot ten fellow looking ridiculously small as I was currently impaled on the Shredder, mighty appendage to the six foot six ebony behemoth seemingly bent on getting me pregnant. His huge muscular arms held me effortlessly in place while my cock hung limp between us, three successive orgasms having been wrung out of it while he of course was still hard as ever.

Life was unfair – _but so damn good!_

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It was thirteen years ago that I, the great-great-great-grandson of John Watson, and my husband Shere, great-great-great-grandson of Sherlock Holmes, had moved into 'Elementary'. It had been the house of my great-uncle Sherlock Watson and his lover of nearly fifty years Nick Jackson-Giles (a distant cousin of Shere's), but after the latter's death at the end of 2006 my great-uncle had very generously invited us to move in prior to making the place over to us. He died after we had been there just six months so the cottage was ours – mine and my faithful husband, the love of my life and the man who will one day surely end me through sex! It is also blatantly unfair that he inherited his other ancestor Mary O'Reilly's Sight, which he uses in his private dick business and.... for other reasons that always leave me wondering about that damn life-insurance policy!

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My parents had agreed to take Shem and JJ for the night, and it was worth the two pests rolling their eyes at me as they left. They knew full well what was going down (me), as well as what would befall them if they did not do their chores properly any time soon (The Great Dick-tator going into sudden and full detail of his plans at the dinner-table). I may have shuddered ever so slightly as they had left, but it had been a manly shudder.

It had been!

We had something to celebrate as today would see the publication of 'Elementary 221B', an expanded Sherlock canon featuring some sixty-three new cases that we had found behind a box of sex-toys in the cupboard under the stairs (the second such box we found in there; our ancestors were clearly as bad as _someone_ that I could mention!). It had been an effort to get the stories cleared for publication – like our ancestors we were determined that no innocent man or woman should be hurt by these stories – but all had gone well and all the stories had been okayed to be put out there. Which was why my poor, battered body was once again being treated like some sort of sex toy for my husband's pleasure. As I said, life was _good!_

“Floor sounds hollow here”, he muttered as he tried to thrust even deeper into me. “Remind me to get back to it sometime. More important things to do first – _starting with you!”_

I think that I nodded. Either way he set to work again with a vengeance.

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The following day I managed to limp the several thousand miles to where some bastard had moved the kitchen – thank our ancestors for putting in that ground floor bedroom as no way could I have managed those stairs! – when the reason for my less than perfect state came in carrying a large, wooden chest.

“What is that?” I yawned.

He gave me a look that suggested serious molestation lay in my not too distant future. I shuddered in terror and almost prayed for my parents to bring the kids back. 

Almost. I was definitely praying!

“What we found under the shed floor last night”, he said with an annoyingly smug look. “Wonder what's in it? More of their sex toys, hopefully!”

Ye Gods I hoped not! I had promised to take weekend surgery so I could have this week off to mark the launch of our literary career. It was bad enough already having to endure the smirking from people at the surgery when I limped in some mornings after someone's overly effusive wake-up call; even a padded chair can only do so much. And the bastard used his Sight to drop by sometimes during my variable lunch-hour and leave me in an even worse state for the afternoon ahead.

I loved that man so damn much!

As we prised open the chest I was surprised to see that it was airtight. The documents inside were in mint condition, and as we read through them we were both astounded.

“This is creepy”, he said. “Almost as if... you know.”

I knew. It had been an experience editing some of those new stories, as they had run the gamut light-hearted fluff to brutal murder with no warning before any change. And just as we were done, there were more of the things.

“They must have spent their last few years after the 1936 canon doing this”, I said. “This is a list of all the new cases and the old in date order, even including your ancestor's adventures while mine was away in Egypt. There are nearly forty of them.”

“It's a sign!” he said in a mock spooky voice. “They want us to publish them!”

I shook my head at him, but still I wondered......

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Finding the time to edit what would turn out to be over a hundred and forty new works let alone a whole extra set of interludes and asides was not easy for two men in full-time employment, especially when one of them insisted on using most of their spare time to reduce the other to a somewhat less than fully coherent state and I can _hear_ that smirk! However Shere's job involved some periods of downtime which being him he could always foresee, so he would always sext me before starting on editing the stories (I had long learned never to read any of his messages when patients or staff were around, the dirty dog!). Thankfully these new adventures were nearly all shorter than the ones already in the canon, although his ancestor's writing was almost as bad as his. Plus we had Shem and JJ to help during their summer holidays, unless they wanted Mr. Tight-Arse to start traumatizing them again by 'forgetting' to put his clothes on of a morning.

I did point out to my beloved that that was _technically_ blackmail, but he just looked at me in confusion.

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It was May before we encountered the first real horror, and since the boys had not tidied their room as asked I left it for them to find and read. Watching poor JJ's face and the way he looked at us both before wincing. I knew that he had found it.

“The one with the lace?” I asked innocently.

He nodded, dumbstruck.

“Some _men_ are into that sort of thing”, grinned a very bad person who was eyeing me lasciviously.

I could see poor JJ trying and failing to prevent his mind forming an image that would likely scar him for life. Judging from the horrified whimper, he had failed so to do. Oh well.

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The last day of May, and I winced as I read about that case in Gloucestershire. 

“Wouldn't you have done the same if it had been those two?” my love asked quietly, pulling me into... a manly embrace. 

“I would have done something”, I admitted, “but.... that?”

“For what he did, that rat deserved it!” he said shortly. “It's the weak-willed courts of today that will cause more things like that if they go on letting people off as they do. The English can only take so much before, as the saying goes, they speak.”

Educated _and_ hung like a Clydesdale. Someone up there liked me!

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Mid-June, and something to lighten our spirits. 

“Rubber ducks!” I chuckled. “Remember when poor JJ went into our bathroom and looked at where we kept Ducky?”

“And found that we keep a few 'toys' there with him!” Shere Magic grinned. “Curiosity may have killed the cat, but it also scarred the young Watson-Holmes!”

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Still June, and it was poor Shem's turn to find a horror lurking in the new tales. It may have been a bit bad of me, but I took us all out to a local pub for a Sunday roast and quite deliberately put a certain something on my plate. I noticed how pale Shem went when he saw it.

“What's up?” JJ asked, puzzled by his brother's reaction.

“I like stuffing”, I said conversationally.

Shem leaned over and whispered something into his brother's ear. JJ went an impressively shade of white.

“Not hungry?” Shere said innocently. “More for us, then.”

They both glared at us.

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I sighed. The Chuffingden Charger was, incredibly, getting worse!

“That was just mean!” I scolded. “Getting a rugby ball just as they were reading about that story your ancestor's mother wrote.”

“Her stories were something else”, he grinned. “And Shem's face when he saw it – he thought it was some new kink of ours!”

“Can't think why he would believe such a thing”, I muttered, “even after he found those man-size panties that _someone_ deliberately left in the washing.... wait a minute. You didn't go and buy a whole rugby kit, did you?”

He snickered shamelessly. 

“Only a pair of England socks for now”, he said. “Very comfortable; I'm looking forward to fucking you later while I'm wearing just them. Then wearing them around the house and waiting for Shem and JJ to put two and two together!”

He really was getting worse. Thank God!

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“Buried alive?” I exclaimed in horror. “I mean, how could they?”

My love pulled me into his arms.

“Because that was was it took”, he said simply. “For all that guff about people becoming better as the years progress, some don't. And they need to be dealt with.”

I shuddered and let him... manfully embrace me. One of these days however I _would_ work out just how I could hear that damn smirk of his!

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It was August before we encountered the next horror, and this was too bad to even inflict on the boys. Well, for now.

“A scarecrow!” I muttered as I allowed Shere to manfully embrace me. “I mean, I know that it was justice but.... ugh! And the fellow's own father!”

"Who was complicit in the crime", he said. "Like I said; when people's patience breaks, it breaks bad."

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“Royalty or rags”, I said with a sigh. “All the same beneath the surface.”

Shere pulled me close and kissed me gently. Outside first rains of September continued to fall softly.

“He had a choice”, he said shortly, “and he made the wrong choice. Love is beautiful, but not to be crossed lightly. If anyone hurt you....”

He was almost crushing me in those strong arms of his, but for once I let him. I knew that for all his great strength he was sometimes insecure, and he needed to hold me like this.

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“That was... short.”

I smiled at my love's observation.

“I think it good that we include the odd case that did what he said so many cases did”, I said. “One that just petered out, although with a funny ending.”

“Let's see if you like being on the funny end of my peter!” he grinned.

As I said, getting worse. Thankfully!

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“The publishers want us to have it all done ready for the first book to go out on Guy Fawkes's Night”, I fretted. “That leaves us less than two months and... what is it?”

My Arch-Tormentor shuddered.

“I just read the latest one”, he said. “With the Guy.”

“I cannot think that anyone would want to mark someone who _failed_ to blow up the House of Commons, especially with the current bunch of traitors”, I said. “People who promise one thing then rat on their word once they're in power. If a modern-day Guy tried it and succeeded he would more likely be a national hero!”

“I bet my old friends in the service would arrest you for incitement to violence for saying that”, he said with a smile. “Come to that, I'm incited right now!”

I just shook my head at him.

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“Murder by bi-plane!” Mr. Sexy exclaimed. “Only three to go after this, and we've still two weeks left.

“You are forgetting all those bits covering extra events after His Last Bow”, I reminded him.

“I never forget my bits”, he said proudly. “Want me to prove it?”

I shook my head at him.

“We should get this done first”, I said. “Focus, you sex-maniac!”

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Hallelujah! Just in time for Guy Fawkes's Night we had done it! 'Holmes & Watson', the ultimate Sherlock canon. 184 stories narrated by John, 165 by Sherlock, one by them both and the remaining sixteen by friends and family. Not forgetting around two hundred other bits covering what happened before, during and after their cases. So here it is. There are 32 mini-books, and the overall layout will be as follows (the number of cases in each section is in brackets):  
Book 1  
Prologue  
  
Book 2  
In The Beginning  
  
Book 3  
Montague Street  
  
Book 4  
Cramer Street: Part I  
  
Book 5  
Cramer Street: Part II  
  
Book 6  
Cramer Street: Part II  
  
Book 7  
Dorset Street  
  
Book 8  
The Early Hiatus: Part I  
  
Book 9  
The Early Hiatus: Part II  
  
Book 10  
The Early Hiatus: Part III  
  
Book 11  
Baker Street: Part I  
  
Book 12  
The Grand Tour  
  
Book 13  
Baker Street: Part II  
  
Book 14  
Baker Street: Part III  
  
Book 15  
The Great Hiatus  
  
Book 16  
Baker Street: Part IV  
  
Book 17  
Baker Street: Part V  
  
Book 18  
Baker Street: Part VI  
  
Book 19  
Return To Futility  
  
Book 20  
Baker Street: Part VII  
  
Book 21  
The Little Hiatus  
  
Book 22  
Baker Street: Part VIII  
  
Book 23  
Apocalypse Now  
  
Book 24  
Baker Street: Part IX  
  
Book 25  
Baker Street: Part X  
  
Book 26  
Baker Street: Part XI  
  
Book 27  
Baker Street: Part XII  
  
Book 28  
The Elementary Cases  
  
Book 29  
Growing Old Disgracefully  
  
Book 30  
All Good Things  
  
Book 31  
Epilogue  
  
Book 32  
Appendices  
  
I am sure that as well as the many 'Johnlock' fans, there are many so-called great and good out there who may well fear this final Sherlock canon. Although I doubt any of them trembled quite as much as I did the other night when 'someone' finished his work on the last chapter, then turned to me and told me that the boys were staying with my sister for the weekend so that he could make up for lost time by giving me his _full_ attentions. And he is wearing those damn rugby socks again!

I need to get my will done – _before Saturday!_

St.J. W-H.

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	3. Mr. Sherlock Holmes, Esquire: An 1874 Q&A

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lady Aelfrida Holmes's youngest son answers some questions as to his life in 1874.

_Full name?_  
Sherlock Alfred Holmes. Alfred after my inimitable mother and Sherlock – definitely after her father Lockford O'Reilly and possibly for father's friend Sheridan, Lord Hawke. The name means 'sheared locks' which some people seem to find amusing for some reason; I suppose that at least it spared me the geographical names of my mostly useless elder brothers.

 _Where and when were you born?_  
September 3rd,1854 in Mallow, County Cork, Ireland. I know that Mother and Father had some sort of split at the time because she had gone back to her home town to have me while he went into some sort of sanatorium – servants will always gossip. I am afraid to look into it further in case I find something horrible – this is my mother, after all!

 _Describe yourself physically._  
I was uncommonly tall at a neat six foot, so some seven inches above what was then the norm for gentlemen. Although I ate heartily I never seemed to put on weight, which annoyed several of my family and in particular my horrible brother Torver who lived in fear that Mother would insist on his going on a diet (I may or may not have encouraged her by leaving the occasional diet book around the house). I had black hair which I always kept long and did _try_ to keep tidy, despite what people said. My best facial feature was my eyes which were electric blue; my face was what would in a later generation be described as 'cosmetically-challenged' and I was perhaps not the most well-kempt of people when it came to my appearance, although I was sure that my brother Carl exaggerated when he said I looked like I had been caught in a tornado, twice. Well, he exaggerated a bit.

 _What did you want to be while you were growing up?_  
Something that involved using my brain, as I always felt that I had to not squander the exceptional talent that the Good Lord had given me. There was a young nobleman who I once met as a child and who I felt was everything that I wished to be as an adult; we were not dissimilar in appearances and he had eyes similar in shade to mine, but the goodness in him just _shone_. Sadly he died not long after.

 _What made you want to be a consulting detective?_  
When you are as smart as I am, it was the obvious choice. I did consider the police but, a few of them apart, most are utterly unimaginative.

 _Where are you in your life just now?_  
About to start the fourth year of a six-year Humanities course at Bargate College in Oxford (I have been there only two years but my brilliance has gotten me a year ahead, which was only to be expected). Unfortunately I have been less successful in my private life; my first serious relationship for which I had great hopes came to an end when the lady's father objected to my suit because of my Irish heritage. At least I could lose myself in my studies, and I did.

 _Describe yourself in just five words._  
Brilliant, Careful, Efficient, Just and Plain-Speaking.

 _What is your worst character failing?_  
I do not think that I have any. My stepbrother Campbell says that I am too secretive and do not trust people, but then he was not the one who had to grow up with five older and nosier brothers. My 'sort of' cousin Luke (he is Campbell's cousin, not mine) claims that before the one time that he visited me at Bargate, I should have advised him to have taken out life-insurance as he claimed that he had been unable to cross my room without severe risk of injury. I am not _that_ untidy! My room-mate Stamford says that I am that untidy, and also utterly impossible until I have had substantial amounts of bacon and coffee of a morning which... I am sure that there is a fallacy in his reasoning somewhere, and also that I do not actually snarl at him of a morning if he does not have a coffee ready for me. Carl says that I am the most immodest gentleman in all London Town as well as the scruffiest, but then he is in the Army so expects high standards. And my sister Anna says that I am both emotionally frigid and hypocritical.  
It does concern me somewhat that these are the people I actually get on with!

 _Likes?_  
Bacon. Coffee. More bacon. More coffee. Even more bacon and coffee (perhaps Stamford has a point about that). Then my beloved barley-sugar. I like bees, I play the violin moderately well, and enjoy practising my shooting as and when I can in between more bacon and coffee.  
I suppose that I had probably better also say Carl, Anna, Campbell and Luke, despite what they said about me. Fortunately I am generous-minded enough to overlook their remarks.  
My proudest possessions are the deer-stalker hat and pipe left me by the aforementioned family friend. I do not want to go into that as it is too painful, but he would still contrive to play a major role in my life in ways that even someone as smart as I could never have imagined. I keep these prize possessions locked in my safe and only ever take them out when alone, although I use copies in public which made many people in particular wonder why I wear a hat designed to hunt wild animals in. Because.

 _Dislikes?_  
Mycroft, Torver, Randall and Guilford, all of whom have this irritating habit called breathing! Mornings; I do not do well first thing unless I have a specific need to rise early..... damn Stamford! People who tidy thing in such a way that I cannot find what I want without making the room marginally less tidy that it was when I started. Irrelevancies; I detest knowing anything unimportant as it slows the operation of my otherwise excellent brain. Bigotry of any sort; it is illogical and inefficient. Bright lights; also illogical and inefficient. Unnecessary running around; I cannot understand the modern fashion that the police service has acquired for going places rather than just sitting down and thinking of the right solution. Lilac water; I am strongly allergic. My so called social betters when they think that they have the right to talk down to me and others that they regard as beneath them. Certain ladies, married or not, who look at me in a rather alarming manner as if they are thinking.... ugh! Finally and above all else, my mother's stories; if they ever do put a man on the Moon it will be most likely because he was trying to escape her writings!  
I am surprisingly easy to please, really.

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	4. Mr. John Watson, Esquire: An 1874 Q&A

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The late Mrs. Edith Watson's elder son answers some questions as to his life in 1874.

The late Mrs. Edith Watson's elder son answers some questions as to his life in 1874.

 _Full name?_  
John Hamish Watson. My mother chose John after her sole brother who died just before he was due to marry, and Hamish after her grandfather who died the year before I was born. My mother was from just over the Border in Roxburghshire but I have always regarded myself as entirely English.

 _Where and when were you born?_  
January 12th, 1852 in Belford, Northumberland, about fifteen miles south of the Border. A beautiful area; I was lucky to grow up there. We lived right next to the station which was a mile out of town; I liked watching the trains but never felt any inclination to become a railwayman.

 _Describe yourself physically._  
Five foot ten, so five inches above the average height for the time. I had a stocky, muscular build; I played rugby a few times for my local village team before I left Northumberland. My hair was somewhere between sandy and dark blond, always cut to the standard fashion. I liked my hazel or hazel-green eyes but loathed the freckles that spattered my body (my giraffe of a brother had none of the things, which was just unfair!). I had a smartly-groomed moustache and would have described myself as well-kempt.

 _What did you want to be while you were growing up?_  
Always a doctor. I had dreams of being an explorer at one time; I was fond of going the short distance to the sea at Budle Bay or Bamburgh and imagining a life of adventure, but I always knew that they were just dreams. Especially as I tend to get seasick rather too easily!

 _What made you want to be a doctor?_  
I always enjoyed helping people, and I was allowed to assist first Doctor Felton then his replacement in Belford, Doctor Winchelsey; the latter is a good friend of mine. Plus as I said, I spent two years caring for my mother in her final illness. 

_Where are you in your life just now?_  
I had two pieces of luck after my useless father died drunk in a ditch six years back. My maternal grandfather Mr. Mark Campbell had passed but he had left my mother a large sum in trust so that my father could not spend it all down whichever local tavern had not yet banned him (very wise!). And as I said there was my mother's friendship with Sir Edward Holmes's first wife Miss Mary Kerr (they came from different towns but had attended the same school in Roxburghshire), even though that marriage had lasted barely a year which led him to step in and help out; that was exceptionally kind on such a slight acquaintance.  
For the past two years I have been what they call 'distance learning', reading and writing essays then sending them down to St. Bartholomew's Hospital to be marked. I have a contact there, a fellow student called Peter Greenwood who has been exceptionally helpful, It has still been an effort but I completed the first two years of my studies before my mother passed, and Sir Edward arranged for me to come to London for the rest. He had also got Stevie onto a legal course up in Edinburgh, despite the giraffe only being sixteen. When I looked at how hard so many people had it back then, I knew that we had both been very lucky.

 _Describe yourself in just five words._  
Brave, English, Honest, Manly and Righteous.

 _What is your worst character failing?_  
I always fear the worst, namely that if good things happen then bad things are just waiting in line. This thing called life tends to prove me right most times. The giraffe says that I can be anal over tidiness, but that is from someone who is always playing with his _glorious_ hair! I also worry too much, especially every time that I get a bank statement.

 _Likes?_  
Stevie, I suppose, unless he grows even more! My native Northumberland. Helping people. Chocolate anything; the chocolate bar was the greatest Victorian invention ever. Straightforwardness, which was why I got on so well with the occasionally blunt Stamford whom I was heading to visit at Oxford for a few weeks. And people who pay their bills on time; I often wondered just how our village doctors got by, the way some of their patients acted!

 _Dislikes?_  
People who think that they are better than they actually are. The Northumberland bagpipes; think a ship full of accordions and terrified cats out on a stormy sea. Untidiness, (shut up, Stevie!). People, foreigners _and_ natives, who live here yet always bang on about how they hate England; nothing is stopping them from leaving. Feline venomous shredding-machines, or cats as some people prefer to call them. Heights; I am severely acrophobic. Rough sea-journeys, as I said before. And looking at my latest bank statement without a large whisky to hand.

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	5. Dramatis Personae

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The important people around the lives of Sherlock Holmes (20) and John Watson (22), as things stood in 1874. Those in italics were or are not yet known to either of the two gentlemen. There may or may not be the odd surprising revelation about what you are about to read that will change everything, because the author is like that.

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** Mr. Sherlock Holmes's Family **

_PATERNAL GREAT-GRANDFATHER: Mr. Thomas Holmes (d. 1844)_  
A gentleman who performed several political-legal services for various governments. A most curious character; he fell out with his son George and when the latter predeceased him in 1830 asked that his grandson Edward be made a baronet when he came of age. Very unusually for his age Thomas specifically disinherited any descendant who bore his Christian name.

_MATERNAL GRANDFATHER: Mr. Lockford O'Reilly (d. 1870)_  
The fellow after whom Sherlock was partly named. A huge, fearsome fellow not unlike his other grandson Carlyon Holmes in appearance but bigger and with red hair. Actually a quiet market-trader in the town of Mallow, but he took strong exception to any criminality in his town, in the form of stomping on criminals until they stopped. This worked rather well.

_MATERNAL GRANDMOTHER: Mrs. Mary O'Reilly, née MacDonnell (d. 1866)_  
An Ulsterwoman from whom Sherlock's twin Sherrinford inherited the Sight, and through whom both twins are one-sixteenth Scottish. It was on her advice that the twins were separated at birth with Sherrinford being passed off as a distant cousin whom Edmund Holmes then adopted.

**MOTHER: Lady Aelfrida Holmes, née O'Reilly (46)**  
A lady famed for her 'unforgettable' stories _(see Appendix 2 for a full list, but not after having eaten anything heavy)_. She is almost an Amazon in appearance and known for her bursts of temper which, like tornadoes, are best avoided for pretty much the same reason. After the first and thus far only Level 12 (The Goldfish Incident) the family had to move house, and it took Randall a year to lose the limp. The ratings are as follows:  
_Level 1 = Mildly Irritated_  
_Level 2 = Irked_  
_Level 3 = Riled_  
_Level 4 = Displeased_  
_Level 5 = Cross_  
_Level 6 = Seriously Displeased_  
_Level 7 = Livid_  
_Level 8 = Furious_  
_Level 9 = Bloody Furious_  
_Level 10 = Absolutely Bloody Furious_  
_Level 11 = Incandescent_  
_Level 12 = Apocalyptic_

**FATHER: Sir Edward Holmes, Baronet (49)**  
His father George had died when he had been only five years old, so his uncle Edmund had overseen his upbringing. His grandfather Thomas died when he was eighteen and he immediately married Miss Mary Kerr (Thomas had opposed the match; it caused further scandal at the time because it happened during a supposed period of mourning). However the first Mrs. Holmes died in childbirth delivering a son Campbell who was then formally adopted by his grandfather Sir Jameson Kerr as his principal heir. Edward was officially made a baronet upon his majority (1846); he married Lady Aelfrida in 1847 so Lord alone knows what horrors he must have committed in a previous life to have deserved that! He is a government lawyer; physically nondescript but clever in his own way especially when it comes to avoiding having to listen to his wife's terrible stories. 

**BROTHER: Mr. Mycroft Holmes (26)**  
Sir Edward's eldest son and a general layabout, a fellow of average height with dark hair and a permanent scowl. Named for the family's Scottish estate where he and his twin..... you know. He bitterly resents that his father is only a baronet so he himself cannot inherit a title. Mycroft is married (unhappily) to his first cousin once removed Rachael Fellowes; he considers their three daughters – Mary (5), Charlotte (4) and Elizabeth (2) – a disappointment. He also detests his twin....

**BROTHER: Lieutenant Carlyon Holmes (26)**  
As tall as Sherlock although broader in the chest and much more muscular. Nine minutes younger than his twin but clearly the Fates shifted in that time as they could not be more different, the younger Holmes is named for the family's Cornish estate where they were both born. A strong temper but he can control it, although those around him are never quite sure of that. Happily married to Anne Spencer-Churchill (aunt to a certain Winston born that year!), he has five sons: Edward (5), Charles (4), Edmund (2), Peter (1) and Adam, born last month. 

**BROTHER: Mr. Torver Holmes (24)**  
Something of the undertaker about this rotund fellow a little above the average height, named for the family's estate near Coniston Water in the Lake District. A deeply unpleasant personality may also explain why he has not yet found anyone on a planet of eight hundred million people who can tolerate him without wishing to kill him. He has on occasion demonstrated both a viciousness and a degree of mental instability which will lead to big trouble for Sherlock later on in life. 

**BROTHER: Mr. Randall Holmes (22)**  
Almost as tall as Sherlock but blond, urbane and very proud of his appearance which he believes makes up for a total lack of character and morals (it does not even come close). Named for the family's Peak District estate in Derbyshire. Will have sex with any woman who he can charm/pay into his bed. One of three family members to work for the government, in each case as what is colloquially known as a 'fixer' (i.e. someone who does something illegal that needs doing but can be denied if/when needed). He has a supreme and rather surprising self-confidence in his own infallibility, which will prove capable of surviving frequent and often bruising encounters with reality and/or his mother.

**BROTHER: Mr. Guilford Holmes (21)**  
The shortest family member at a little over five foot, named for the street where the family's London house is. Far too fond of practical jokes, although not on Sherlock after the feathers and strong glue incident that involved both a most embarrassing trip to the hospital and a hired photographer. He and Randall were also behind The Goldfish Incident. Surprisingly Guilford too works for the government, perhaps because no-one knowing his character would believe that he could drag himself away from his latest bag of sweets long enough so to do.

_TWIN BROTHER: Mr. Sherrinford Holmes (20)_  
Eleven minutes older than Sherlock, who is currently unaware of his existence as Sherrinford was adopted by his great-uncle Edmund. This was on the advice of the twins' grandmother Mary, from whom Sherrinford inherited the Sight which he will use to try to protect his somewhat disaster-prone sibling. The elder twin's appearance is hard to describe; his hair and eye-colour seem to vary yet there is always something of his twin about him. His adoptive father's three daughters Joan (38), Harriet (36) and Sarah (33) all utterly loathe him, but he has been able to use his abilities to always stay one step ahead of their machinations against him.

**SISTER: Miss Annabella (Anna) Holmes (18)**  
The only Holmes daughter, slightly taller than average and with her mother's auburn-red hair but of a much more slender build. She prefers Anna and like most of her brothers has a geographical name, in this instance of a place near her mother's native Mallow, Ireland. Very determined when it comes to getting her own way, but then growing up with elder brothers the likes of Mycroft, Torver, Randall and Guilford, she might perhaps better be praised for not having resorted to murder. Then again, she might not. She is a good friend to Sherlock.

_STEPMOTHER'S FATHER: Sir Jameson Kerr, Baronet (d. 1867)_  
Father of Sir Edward Holmes's first wife Mary Kerr, so no relation to Sherlock. He had only two children the younger of whom, Alice, had rather disobliged him my marrying a penniless actor Mr. James Garrick, so when Mary died in childbirth Sir Jameson adopted her son Campbell as his own and made him heir to two-thirds of his estate, the rest passing to Alice. In fact she narrowly predeceased him so it was her only son Lucifer who inherited the other third of the estate.

**STEPBROTHER: Mr. Campbell Kerr (29)**  
Think a six foot three barely-civilized Celtic warrior in a suit. The only issue of Sir Edward Holmes's first marriage to Miss Mary Kerr, he was adopted and raised by his maternal grandfather (hence the surname) because the latter wished for someone to inherit the bulk of his estate. When the old man died some years back Campbell was more than a little surprised to find that his two-thirds of the Kerr estate included a number of Debating Societies (molly-houses) in London, but he has since made a brilliant job of running them. He is a good friend to Sherlock if ever so occasionally (far too often in his stepbrother's opinion) an annoyingly smug sibling.

**STEPBROTHER'S COUSIN: Mr. Lucifer Garrick (26)**  
Campbell's first cousin who inherited one-third of the Kerr estate. He is technically not a blood-relation to Sherlock although they call each other cousins. Luke's own parents died seven years back and he finished being raised at the house of Sir Edward Holmes who secured him a government post similar to that of Randall and Guilford. Almost identical in appearance to Carlyon Holmes although he is three months the soldier's junior, Luke is a good friend to Sherlock and does a difficult job with a surprising degree of humanity. Because of that job he is careful to restrict himself to one man at a time in order to negate the dangers of blackmail; his current lover is Mr. Cheiron 'Kai' Jones but he retains a soft (and often sore!) spot for the Selkirk twins, his first sexual encounter with men.

**PATERNAL GREAT-UNCLE: Mr. Edmund Holmes (65)**  
He had raised his nephew the young Sir Edward when the latter's own father George had died with the boy only five years old. Not a job that he was really cut out for, Edmund had by 1874 become the original curmudgeon who keeps away from the rest of the family to the mutual satisfaction of both parties. A widower, all three of his daughters made marriages that he disapproved of so he does not see them either (they too are fine with this, although when he dies and they find out what he left them in his will they may perhaps be slightly less than fine). Edmund lives alone with his other great-nephew Sherrinford, whom he has adopted and passed off as a distant cousin who had been orphaned.

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** Mr. John Watson's Family **

_PATERNAL GRANDFATHER: Captain Saul Watson (d.1866)_  
Army captain who served at Waterloo when only nineteen years of age. He left the service soon after (not it seems due to any physical injury) and around the same time adopted two distant relatives who had been orphaned, John's aunt Cassandra and his father Henry. Saul's only child from his marriage, Edward, became a doctor but only outlived him by six years; the latter's son another Edward became an Army doctor (see below).

**MOTHER: Mrs. Edith Watson, née Campbell (d. 1874)**  
Fortunately her father Mr. Mark Campbell had left her a sum in trust so her husband had been unable to spend it down whichever pub he had not yet been banned from. Even more fortunately her childhood friend in Jedburgh (Roxburghshire) had been one Mary Kerr, Sir Edward Holmes's first if short-lived wife. Both Sherlock and John assumed that this was why Sir Edward helped out the Watson family. 

**FATHER: Mr. Henry Watson (d. 1868)**  
Adopted along with Cassandra by his distant relative Saul Watson, Henry was an odd-job man who devoted most of his life to propping up bars and cadging drinks off people. When he was found drunk and dead in a ditch by his elder son, it surprised precisely nobody but rather disappointed local innkeepers, or at least those who had not yet banned him from their premises. 

**BROTHER: Master Stephen Watson (16)**  
Annoyingly tall fellow whom John calls 'the giraffe'. Overly fond of his appearance and his hair, but otherwise a decent fellow. Just before John came south to continue his studies at St. Bartholomew's, Sir Edward Holmes arranged for Stephen to go to Edinburgh and enrol at the University (of which the baronet is a sponsor) and start a law course. It says how talented he is that they accepted him despite his tender years. He too is fond of practical jokes as his elder (and better) brother can attest.

_PATERNAL AUNT: Mrs. Cassandra Newton, née Watson (d.1855)_  
As mentioned, adopted by Saul Watson, who had died in 1866. Little is known of her as she moved to Norfolk and cut off all contact with the family after her 1838 marriage to one Mr. Richard Newton (died 1870). She had one son:

_FIRST COUSIN: Mr. Teledamus Newton, Esquire (19)_  
Cassandra's son. John is barely aware of his existence – but that will change.

**MATERNAL AUNT: Mrs. Janet Johnson, née Campbell (34)**  
She had been born when both her parents were in their late forties and was a quarter of a century younger than her sister, John's mother. John does not remember her much as she married when he was just ten to an American Mr. Richie Johnson. They settled in Lancashire and have no children. 

_FIRST COUSIN: Doctor Edward Watson, M.D. (30)_  
He is single, works as an Army doctor, and one day not that far into the future he will wreck both John's and Sherlock's lives thoroughly – but arguably for their own good.

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** Mutual Friends **

**Mr. James Stamford (20)**  
Tallish dark-haired fellow who grew up with John in Belford, Northumberland, and came to Oxford at the same time as Sherlock (Sir Edward arranged for them to be room-mates) in 1872. John likes his friend's candour and will later stand as godfather to his eldest boy Joshua (b. 1876), although Sherlock does not always appreciate when his friend tells him how annoying/untidy/impossible he is from time to time (i.e. daily). Stamford plays the Northumberland pipes which with Sherlock's violin-playing may explain why their rooms at Bargate College are so isolated from everyone else's. He is also an expert in foreign languages, which will affect his eventual career.

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** Mr. Sherlock Holmes's Friends **

**Sergeant Gawain LeStrade (31)**  
Solidly-built, shaven-headed and menacing-looking fellow of above average height, not the sort you would want to meet even in a well-lit alley. A good policeman who hunts down criminals and cake with equal(ish) zest. His family all have Arthurian names because of a past and rather large inheritance that only goes to those with them. LeStrade is married to Valerie and has five children; Gareth (11), Gereint (9), Gaheris (6), and the twins Galleron and Iseult (4). He utterly hates....

**Sergeant Tobias Gregson (31)**  
Tall blond patrician of a fellow, a younger brother of William, 4th Baron Gregson. Devoted to hunting down criminals and cake (possibly not always in that order), and of course hating LeStrade. Married to Mary he has two sons, Tobias Junior (4) and Tristram (2); she is currently pregnant.

**Miss Amelia Everett (20)**  
An attractive neighbour of Sherlock until recently and his first love. Also his first... you know. Her father broke up their relationship because of Sherlock's Irish heritage. She will soon marry Edgar, Lord Dundas, who is also of foreign extraction but rich, a nobleman and above all not Irish, so that is all right.

**Mr. Bors LeStrade (19)**  
Gawain LeStrade's younger brother who works as a railwayman; he is slow of thought but good-hearted. Sherlock will shortly be instrumental in helping him achieve justice after an industrial injury.

**Mr. Balan Selkirk (18)** and  
**Mr. Balin Selkirk (18)**  
Virtually identical twins who were disowned by their parents when they reached puberty and started developing feelings – for each other! Fortunately Campbell learned of their plight and brought them aged twelve to London with him, where they have now started in the business, and sometimes bring messages to Sherlock. They hate being apart from each other and can often be found with Mr. Lucifer Garrick. And in Mr. Lucifer Garrick!

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** Mr. John Watson's Friends **

**Mr. Peter Greenwood (20)**  
Tall blond medical student who became John's link to St. Bartholomew's when the latter was 'distance studying'. A randy young dog but good-hearted, one day he will save John's life. And get someone a panda.

**Doctor Thaddeus Winchelsey (52)**  
One of two doctors who served the village of Belford while John was growing up and who allowed the young boy to work with him. John will one day be able to return the favour.

**Reverend Henry Potter (20)**  
Vicar who took over his post in Belford when his predecessor had run off with the church funds, and more importantly, just after John's mother had just died. He was particularly helpful to the bereaved parishioner some eight months his senior.

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** The Hawke/Buckingham Family **  
_(See Appendix 3 for a full family history)._

**Sheridan Hawke, 8th Lord Hawke (56)**  
Business acquaintance of Sir Edward Holmes, he helped the baronet through a particularly rough time in the mid-fifties. He married twice but had only two sons; Tobias 9th Lord Hawke and Theobald 10th Lord Hawke. He resigned the title to Lord Tobias when his son reached eighteen in 1860 but upon his untimely death two years later he had to resume some of his duties as Theobald was then only two years of age. He was assisted in this by his son-in-law Mr. Henry Buckingham who had married his daughter Mary. The old joke that Lord Sheridan could have raised a football team from his many bastards is, sad to say, something of an understatement; he could also have also provided the opposition, the substitutes, the officials, and have made a good start on the crowd. 

_Tobias Hawke II, 9th Lord Hawke (d. 1862)_  
Tragically short-lived handsome young nobleman who acceded to the title when his father Sheridan resigned it in 1860, he resembled an older version of Sherlock but much neater and with an aura of goodness that would always stay in the memory of the boy who he met when he was nineteen and Sherlock was only seven. Tobias's was to marry one Miss Alice Olney but when his bride eloped with one Mr. Milton Carew on the day of the wedding he went to pieces and some months later took his own life. In his will he left Sherlock the two things that the boy had admired during their brief encounter, his deer-stalker hat and his pipe; the young man keeps them locked away and only ever uses copies of them.

**Theobald Hawke, 10th Lord Hawke (14)**  
Current Lord Hawke and a sickly boy. His father has resumed some duties but the bulk of the work is done by Theobald's 'half-brother-in-law' Mr. Henry Buckingham, a lawyer and the husband Mary Hawke. 

_Master Harry Hawke (12)_  
The son of Mary and Henry Buckingham, Lord Sheridan's elder daughter, so heir presumptive to the Hawke estate. He will become the third Harry, Lord Hawke only if Lord Theobald does not have any children (his mother has stated that she will resign her claim if her son comes of age before acceding).

_Mr. Henry Buckingham, Lord Kitebrook (37)_  
Mary Buckingham's husband. Effectively in charge of the estate until his brother-in-law Lord Theobald comes of age in four years' time, he was granted the courtesy title by Lord Sheridan in 1863. A dour and seemingly unremarkable blond fellow but very smart beneath a bluff exterior.

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** Important Characters To Come **  
_You can skip this section if you want to be surprised when these people roll up in the story._

_Sergeant Fraser Macdonald (24)_  
Like Mr. Campbell Kerr a semi-civilized Celtic warrior; oddly he is descended through his mother from the famously elegant James Marquis of Montrose in the English Civil Wars and is an extremely distant cousin to Sherlock. Over six foot six and with a permanent scowl, he is currently still with the Cumberland & Westmorland Constabulary where he has just made sergeant but will move down to London two years from now and become the superior of both Gregson and LeStrade despite being seven years their junior. It says something for his character that this supremely rapid promotion will not draw any anger as even those who do not like him know him to be fair and just. He is trapped in an arranged marriage to the ghastly Essie which explains his character somewhat (i.e. he hates everybody equally).

_Mrs. Violet Hudson, née Blackadder (19)_  
Recently married to Mr. William Hudson, a police constable who works out of Baker Street Police-Station. An inheritance from the latter's father will in 1882 enable them to buy 221B, a large house at the top end of that thoroughfare and nearly opposite Regent's Park. She currently runs a small lodging-house and carries a pistol, as some of her slower tenants and their less welcome visitors have discovered the hard way. Rather oddly she dresses beyond her years and is known to check up on her tenants from time to time, something that will one day give her a big surprise.

_Master Christopher 'Kristoff' Bond (16)_  
A tall, handsome and very solid Nordic blond who is involved in the trade in ice from Scandinavia to England. In two years time he will settle in London and join Campbell's business. He and his slightly younger lover Mr. Flynn Rider will feature in several adventures with Sherlock and John.

_Master Benjamin Jackson-Giles (14)_  
Son of a rich man who lives in the East End of London. A tall, handsome and muscular boy with almost polished ebony skin, shortly he will make the biggest mistake of his young life by leaving home and trying to make it on his own in the city. His younger brother is Lloyd (2).  
_(See Appendix 4 for a list of his twenty offspring and selected other descendants)._

_Master Lowen Trevelyan (14)_  
Cornish fisherman living in Hugh Town on the Scilly Isles in Cornwall. Slender with white-blond hair, he will meet Sherlock during a memorable case in 1879 and much later will save the detective's life. John Watson will not exactly be overly enamoured of this gentleman. Lowen has an elder brother Blaze, younger brothers Hedrek (11), Kenal (9) and Jago (4) as well as a younger sister Mona (6). 

_Master Sweyn Godfreyson (14)_  
A large fellow from a large family of large children based in Dover, in four years' time he will come to London to seek his fortune and start working at Campbell's molly-houses, the running of which he will later take over.

_Master Valiant LeStrade (12)_  
Nephew of The Great Cake-Detector (Mark One), the son of his elder brother Kay who is a policeman in Surrey. A large and seemingly slow young man, but as so often appearances are deceptive. Sherlock will first meet him in 1876.

_Miss Clementine St. Leger (11)_  
Later secretary to William Swordland, the sort of gentleman who, when a robin falls off a tree in Stepney, can tell you the make of the catapult used in its demise, what the boy who shot it had had for breakfast, and what said boy is hiding under his bed at home. The bubbly but dangerous red-head will be a good friend to Sherlock, as well as a bad enemy to any jam cream finger in the vicinity.

_Master Baldur D'Arcy (11)_  
Scion of a rich East End family with Scottish roots, he will be disowned by them for the crime of joining the police service. Very like his divine namesake, he is in fact a distant cousin of Sherlock's. He will come to London and Sherlock's attention during the dark Moriarty years.

_Prince Tane of Strafford Island (9)_  
Son and heir of King Kaha'i, whose small but strategically important island nation lies in the eastern Pacific some way south of Hawaii. He is not far way from not so much hitting puberty as smashing it to smithereens – and as part of that he will be in London..... 

_Master Chatton Smith (5)_  
Son of Yancy Smith, a dreamy fellow who like his slightly younger cousin Lord Cholmondeley Fortescue is one-eighth Red Indian. He is nine years away from staring up someone's dress, an encounter which will change his and their lives forever.

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	6. 1874 And All That

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This chapter can be skipped if you want, as it just explains how things were in 1874. But it will give you a feel for what was then a very different country, and a very different world.

** 1874 United Kingdom: Demographics **

ϙ The population of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland (formed 1800) was about 32 million. By contrast the population of the Russian Empire was around 70 million, the Chinese Empire 450 million, the United States 43 million, the German Empire 40 million and France 36 million.   
ϙ The population of the British Empire around this time was some 300 million, of whom around 260 million (over 85%) lived in British India. About 4 million lived in Canada, 3 million in other Asian colonies, 2½ million in Australia/New Zealand and 1½ million in the African colonies. Total world population was around 800 million, so over a third of Earth's population had Queen Victoria as their monarch.   
ϙ London's population was around 4 million. Note however that this was the population of 'contiguous London' (i.e. the built-up areas connected to the capital); when most people talked of the city's population they considered only those 1 million or so in the central area, roughly what in 1888 would become London County when it was carved out of Middlesex. The city was also what might be seen as 'unbalanced' (and not just in the idiots down in Westminster!); the northern half was then more developed than the areas south of the Thames.  
ϙ The next largest British cities were Liverpool and Glasgow (both 500,000), Birmingham (350,000), Manchester (340,000), Leeds (250,000) and Sheffield (230,000). The changes in population can be judged by looking at the changes from the start of the century just seventy years back: London up 250%, Manchester 275%, Leeds and Birmingham both 300%, Liverpool 450%, and Glasgow and Sheffield both 500%.   
ϙ Generally speaking, the further down the list one went the more the gap increased. Plymouth, around 50,000 in 1801, managed an 80% increase to 90,000 by 1871 and fell from being the seventh largest place to being the twelfth. A medium-sized towns like Bath, which had seen its population increase to 52,000 (up 30%) in the same period, went as a result from the ninth-largest place to the 25th largest.   
ϙ The railways played a huge part in the growth (or not) of many places. Take the Devonshire towns of Newton Abbot and Holsworthy, which when the railway reached them were of similar size. In the fifty years after they were joined to the railway system, Newton Abbot (including adjoining Newton Bushel which was later incorporated into it) went from 2,400 people to 12,500 (up 420%) while Holsworthy, connected some thirty-three years later, actually declined from 1,950 to 1,350 (down 30%). Today Newton Abbot is still about ten times larger than somewhere it was once almost the same size as.  
ϙ Average life expectancy had risen from 36 back in 1700 to 41 at the start of the decade. These figures were significantly skewed by the still far too high number of child deaths (poor hygiene meant that around a quarter of infants died before the age of two), so people living into their sixties and seventies were not uncommon, especially those as with many in this story who were richer. Life expectancy among the poor was higher in the countryside and lower in the cities, where sewage systems were only beginning to come in.

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** 1874 United Kingdom: Politics (sigh!) **

ϙ Electoral reform had taken three reluctant shuffles forward but still had a long way to go. The 1832 Great Reform Act had got rid of the old rotten and pocket boroughs but had done little else. The 1867 Second Reform Act had expanded the number of people able to vote to some two million men, which led to the unpleasant realization by politicians that it was now far more expensive to bribe people to vote for them. This had led in 1872 to the Secret Ballot Act which too had had an unintended consequence; free from their Protestant landlords threatening all sorts of reprisals if they voted the 'wrong' way, Irish Catholics had used the 1874 general election to desert the two main political parties for their own ones and the Irish Home Rule (self-governance) movement had been born.  
ϙ The women's suffrage movement had become national in 1872; interestingly for all that it had achieved the 1832 Act had been the first to actually ban women from voting although only a very tiny number had qualified so to do beforehand. A small number of property-owning women had since been granted the vote in local elections (Municipal Reform Act of 1869), and this number would increase in the years ahead as the movement made slow progress. The undeservedly more famous suffragette movement did not arise until the early twentieth century and achieved nothing except to aggravate people; it was the part played by women in the First World War that deservedly won them the vote in 1921.  
ϙ The two main political parties in 1874 were the centre-right Conservatives and the centre-left Liberals. However the aforementioned effects of the Secret Ballot Act would in future destabilize British politics as the 'Irish bloc' would sometimes hold the balance of power. The general election in February 1874, the first to be held under the new rules, resulted in the Conservatives getting fewer votes but winning more seats thanks partly to the Liberal collapse in Ireland, where sixty seats (almost everything outside Protestant Ulster) went to the new Irish parties.   
ϙ The new prime minister Benjamin Disraeli (b. 1804) was just starting his second term of office. Born Jewish, he had become an Anglican at the age of twelve.  
ϙ Two social changes were implemented that year. The Factory Act limited the working week to a mere 56 hours and prohibited the employment of children and chimney sweeps, and the tax on sugar was reduced so that it actually became affordable.  
ϙ Queen Victoria had been ruling Great Britain and Ireland since 1837, but had been rarely seen in public since the death of her husband Prince Albert in 1861. Her son and heir Edward Prince of Wales (born 1841) had become pretty much a rake, and she totally excluded him from her governmental duties partly because she blamed him, with some justification, for Albert's early death. The Queen was also unpopular because of her pro-German sentiments which ran against the increasingly anti-German feeling in the country, as well as rumours that her relationship with her ghillie (servant) John Brown was perhaps a little _too_ close.

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** 1874 United Kingdom: Society And Technology **

ϙ Society had changed massively in little more than a generation. In 1840 the advent of the Penny Post, which as well as making the sender pay for the letter charged the same regardless of distance, had made communication cheap, fast and simple. As a result the number of letters sent had risen tenfold in just a quarter of a century, also partly because improved education meant that more people could read and write.  
ϙ The communications revolution was being assisted by the simultaneous arrival of the electric telegraph which could transmit messages at the speed of light, although of course its spread to remoter areas took much longer.   
ϙ The General Post Office announced that after trials in London the current bronze green liveries of their post boxes would be replaced by the more noticeable red.   
ϙ Fry's of Bristol had produced the first chocolate bar in 1847 (plain; milk would not arrive until 1875). Ice-cream reached the United Kingdom in 1851, jelly-babies were first made in 1864 and the first Easter egg was produced in 1873. Tinned foods had become available in the fifties (oddly the tin-opener followed a few years later) while the first fish and chip shops appeared in the 1860s. The electric light-bulb would appear in 1875 and the phonograph in 1876, as would the much more important (as far as Sherlock was concerned!) Heinz tomato ketchup!  
ϙ Photography had been around since the 1840s but was both costly and slow. One reason so many people looked so cross in early photographs was that they had to hold a pose for long enough so that the picture did not become blurry when it was eventually developed, and a scowl is easier to hold than a smile.   
ϙ What a relief – in 1852 the first flush toilet was manufactured. One had been designed in Elizabethan times although nothing had come of it, but now the ghastly 'earth closets' could be replaced. Toilet paper was developed soon after.

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** 1874 United Kingdom: Getting Around **

ϙ Following the recent brilliant move by the Midland Railway to consolidate their second- and third-class compartments into what were effectively 'improved thirds', others were being forced to follow suit. Fifty years into it (and to the abject horror of many railway companies) the Railway Age was finally reaching down to the common people. Companies had resisted this fiercely, and had responded to government attempts to force them to run cheaper services (parliament trains or 'parleys') for the plebs by only doing so late at night or at other impractical hours.  
ϙ Many new lines opened this year including the Taunton to Minehead branch (now mostly the heritage West Somerset Railway), the Barnstaple-Ilfracombe, Sidmouth/Budleigh Salterton and Hythe (Kent)/Sandgate branches (all now closed), the Bath extension of the Somerset and Dorset Railway (closed except for the heritage Midsomer Norton to Chilcompton line), and three still open lines that Sherlock and John would travel down: Norwich to North Walsham (later extended to Cromer), Douglas to Port Erin on the Isle of Man, and the final part of the Highland Railway's line from Helmsdale to Thurso and Wick, what is still the most northerly line in Great Britain.  
ϙ London saw two new termini that year; Holborn Viaduct on the London, Chatham & Dover Railway to ease pressure on Ludgate Hill (both now replaced by St. Paul's Thameslink), and Liverpool Street on the Great Eastern Railway which replaced the smaller Bishopsgate Station.  
ϙ The capital's first underground railway was entering its second decade. Trains were steam-hauled and third-class carriages were still open, so.... ugh!   
ϙ The impact of the railways can be understood by comparing it to what had been before. Even with severely underpowered locomotives and meandering lines – not for nothing did the Great Western Railway become known as the Great Way Round - the railways were at least three to four times faster than the best mail-coaches. A few decades later such vehicles were fast disappearing except in those areas not yet reached by the iron road; the condition of roads had also deteriorated since the rise of the railways had all but destroyed the turnpike trusts who had maintained them in return for tolls.   
ϙ The Great Western Railway on which John Watson is travelling at the start of the story had been built to a gauge fifty per cent wider than elsewhere. It made for faster and better trains but since the rest of the country had virtually all gone for standard gauge the G.W.R. was already being forced to convert down by this time. It was a slow process, and would not be completed until 1892.  
ϙ Sixty-four people died across three major rail crashes that year; Bo'ness Junction, Thorpe (Norwich) and Shipton-on-Cherwell. Each was caused at least partly by railwaymen failing to follow what few safety procedures there were; companies were lax in implementing these on cost grounds.  
ϙ Early railway journeys could often be 'exciting' as one did not know if one was going to reach one's destination without the engine blowing up or some other fateful calamity. Not that the passengers were up to much either; it took several decapitations before people realized just why they were told to _not_ ride on the damn roof or stick their heads out of the windows at speed!  
ϙ The transport revolution had extended across the seas with the first steamships in the 1830s. In little under half a century transatlantic crossings had gone from around three months under sail to less than eight days by steam. This of course had only encouraged emigration, particularly coming as it did just in time for the Irish and Highland Potato Famines of the forties.  
ϙ The White Star Line launched the 'Britannic' that year; the 5,000-ton ship with a capacity of 1,300 passengers later held the Blue Riband for the fastest Atlantic crossing, at an average speed of 15 knots (18 mph). In comparison the 'Titanic' just four decades later was over nine times as heavy at 46,000 tons, with a capacity of 3,300 passengers and a top speed of 24 knots (28 mph). However safety legislation had not caught up, which was why the number of lifeboats required still reflected ships more the size of the old 'Britannic'.  
ϙ The famous Penny Farthing bicycle had been in production for some four years but modern bicycles would not appear for another decade.

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** 1874 United Kingdom: Other **

ϙ Mr. Walter Clopton Wingfield patented a version of real tennis (the version played in an enclosed court) which he called _sphairistike_ for some unknown reason. It became rather better known as lawn tennis.  
ϙ Thomas Hardy published 'Far from The Madding Crowd'.  
ϙ The football clubs of Aston Villa, Christ Church (later Bolton Wanderers), Heart of Midlothian and Morton (later Greenock Morton) were all founded..  
ϙ Birkenhead Park, the first public park in Great Britain, opened in Birkenhead, Cheshire.  
ϙ British currency was the system of _librae, solidii, denarii (£ s d)_ translated as pounds, shillings and pence. There were twelve pennies in a shilling and twenty shillings in a pound. Notes were £5, £10, £20, £50 and £100; private banks were still allowed to print their own notes for customers provided they had done so before the Bank Charter Act of 1844 which prevented any more banks from doing this. Coins were the sovereign (20s or £1), half-sovereign (10s), crown (5s), florin (2s), shilling (1s), sixpence (6d), threepence (3d), penny (1d), halfpenny (½d) and farthing (¼d); as a rough guide you can multiply by a hundred for modern values so a crown would be £25 ($30). This system would continue more or less unchanged until decimalisation in 1971.  
ϙ Income tax was levied at about 1% but the allowance was nearly treble what it is today so most people were exempt from paying. Newly-returned prime minister Benjamin Disraeli had promised to scrap the tax once elected. You are allowed one guess at to what happened when he got in (hint: he was a politician!).  
ϙ After the Hungry Forties the economy had experienced two decades of steady growth, although rising prices meant that people were only slightly better off as a result. But as so often happens after a major conflict the slump following the Franco-Prussian War (1870-1871) led to a depression that would last for most of the seventies.  
ϙ The top ten most popular names for boys as recorded at the 1871 census had been William, John, George, Thomas, James, Charles, Henry, Joseph, Arthur and Frederick. For girls it had been Mary, Elizabeth, Sarah, Alice, Ellen, Anna, Margaret, Emily, Emma and Anne. Notably Victoria had come in at a lowly joint 168th.  
ϙ The average male was five foot five inches tall, five inches less than today (2020). Hence Sherlock and John at seven and five inches above that would have been the modern equivalent of six foot five and six foot three respectively.  
ϙ It was a year for what would prove to be famous births, with authors Gilbert Keith Chesterton and William Somerset Maugham, explorer Ernest Shackleton, composer Gustav Holst and archaeologist Howard Carter all making their entrances onto the world stage – oh, and some politician called Winston Spencer Churchill as well. Wonder what happened to him...?  
ϙ Popping their clogs were historian Agnes Strickland and naturalist William Jardine.  
ϙ Finally, society was very different back then. You don't have to approve of it any more than you have to approve of slavery before reading about the Ancient Romans, but certain things were Done and certain other things were Not Done. As both of the main characters in this story would learn to their cost before too long.

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** 1874 : The British Empire **

ϙ To prevent their supply of tin being disrupted the British effected a change of ruler in Perak (western Malaysia), extending their effective control of the area up from its base in Malacca, Singapore and Penang. This would form the basis for the future Malaysia.  
ϙ Assam (north-east India) was administratively separated from Bengal (Bangladesh and adjoining parts of India).   
ϙ Great Britain annexed the troubled Kingdom of Fiji.   
ϙ The British defeated the Ashanti in the Gold Coast (modern Ghana) and compelled them to sign a treaty both to stop harassing British traders and to end ritual sacrifices. In this campaign British soldiers for the first time abandoned their traditional red coats and wore the colours of the countryside around them - the first camouflage.

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** 1874 : Europe **

ϙ An exhibition in Paris was the first one for Impressionist painters like Claude Monet.  
ϙ Artist Victor Hartmann had a display of drawings and watercolours in Saint Petersburg, Russia. This inspired his friend the wonderfully-named Modest Mussorgsky to write his famous piece 'Pictures At An Exhibition'.  
ϙ Composer Camille Saint-Saëns published his 'Danse Macabre'.  
ϙ Johann Strauss Junior's opera 'Die Fledermaus' opened in Vienna.  
ϙ Jules Verne published 'The Mysterious Island', a crossover sequel to his more famous novel 'Twenty Thousand Leagues Under The Sea'.  
ϙ Swedish chemist Per Teodor Cleve discovered that didymium, a substance used in glass-blowing, was not actually an element in the Periodic Table but a compound of two other elements, neodymium and praseodymium. The names came from Greek words for 'new' and 'leek-green' respectively.  
ϙ French control of Cochin China was established. It would later be combined with southern Annam to create the ill-starred state of South Vietnam.  
ϙ Between 1863 and 1871 Prussia had succeeded in first uniting the manifold German states under its rule and then knocking seven bells out of France before wresting the provinces of Alsace and Lorraine from it, which it would hold until the First World War. This was why anti-German sentiment was so strong in Great Britain at this time, especially as the German Empire was 50% larger than modern Germany. It was also catching up industrially, and by the First World War would be generating more money than the British economy.  
ϙ After five years of war the monarchy was restored in Spain.  
ϙ Iceland secured its own constitution and limited home rule from Denmark.

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** 1874: United States **

ϙ It was only nine years after the end of the terrible Civil War. Ulysses S. Grant had been president since 1869, overseeing the Reconstruction Era (to 1877). His nation consisted of thirty-seven states, the most recent admission having been Nebraska in 1867, and eleven territories. Ten of the latter would become states more or less unchanged while the eleventh would be split into North and South Dakota.  
ϙ Including their metropolitan areas, the largest five cities were New York (1.7 million), Philadelphia (750,000), Boston (500,000), St. Louis (350,000) and Chicago (275,000).  
ϙ Levi Strauss and Jacob Davis secured a patent for blue denim jeans to be sold at just over a dollar each. Like they would ever catch on!  
ϙ Eads Bridge opened across the Mississippi at St. Louis, at about 1¼ miles (2km) long the first real steel bridge and the largest in the world at the time.  
ϙ Over eight hundred buildings were destroyed in a fire in Chicago.  
ϙ Hawaii signed a treaty with the United States granting exclusive trading rights. American troops landed in Honolulu to defend the king from an uprising.  
ϙ New York annexed The Bronx.  
ϙ _Harper's Weekly_ magazine publishes the first cartoon in which the elephant is used as the Republican party symbol.  
ϙ Following a stock-market panic the year before, the country is in a Depression that will last a further five years.  
ϙ A memorable name but little else, it was goodbye to Millard Fillmore, the last Whig US president (1850-1853). And making his bow was future Republican president Herbert Hoover (in office 1929-1933).

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	7. Elementary: Village Life

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 1874\. The trouble with having all the answers is knowing when to use them – and perhaps more importantly, when not to use them.

_[Narration by Mr. Sherrinford Holmes, Esquire]_

This was the place; Chuffingden. Not bad I supposed; the setting under the northern lee of the South Downs was pleasant enough, protected from the winds off the nearby English Channel, and the nearest main road was a mile to the north. Doctor John Hamish Watson would find it 'by chance' some twenty-eight years from now, and it would fit in perfectly with my twin Sherlock's plans for their retirement. The unimaginatively named 'Hill Cottage' behind me would be transferred into 'Elementary' where they would......

No! I mean, just no! This was my baby brother, if only by eleven minutes and sixteen seconds!

You might think that knowing the future is always a good thing, but knowing in far too much detail just what my own flesh and blood had planned for what would be three and a half decades after that.... he needed to put that great brain (and that great flexibility!) of his to better use. Above all I really, _really_ wished that I could somehow 'un-know' about those five 'special boxes' that he would be keeping under the stairs! Then again, when I finally had my own 'mountain-man' to keep In His Place... yes. That fifth box might just be necessary when marking important things like Christmas, birthdays†, St. Placidus's Day‡, the National Day of Brazil# .....

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Sherlock and I were born on September 3rd, 1854 in Mallow, Ireland, a little over two and a half years after John Watson had made his entrance onto the world stage across the Irish Sea in England. Our mother Lady Aelfrida Holmes – writer of some of the worst stories in Mankind's long history – had suffered a stillbirth last year and that coupled with business worries had seen her husband Sir Edward have to go into a sanatorium for a while. Like rather too many in her position, she had sought solace elsewhere and we were the results of that 'solace'. Our real father – I will not reveal his name here save to say that we had rather a lot of (as into three figures!) half-brothers and half-sisters out there – was like so many men unaware of what his one night of passion had done to the world. Despite that ignorance he would certainly put more than a few spokes in poor Sherlock's wheel of fortune despite having only a few years left himself now, but all would come right in the end. I would help make sure of that. 

More important than our father (at least as far as I was concerned) was my maternal grandmother Mary, for she was the one blessed with the Sight. She told my mother that for reasons she could not reveal it was important that Sherlock and I were raised separately, and given how dysfunctional our siblings – half-siblings, I suppose – already were despite their young ages, our mother agreed. Her husband's uncle, a scowling curmudgeon called Mr. Edmund Holmes, had accompanied her back to Ireland and he agreed to raise me as an orphan, partly I suspect because he had three daughters none of whom he particularly liked (and with good reason in all three cases). Sherlock went off to a childhood full of siblings most of whom he would happily have pushed off Beachy Head and stories that helped make the therapy industry what it is today, while I acquired three sisters who should have similarly been dispatched over that headland which lay not far from here. I was not sure which of us got the worse deal.

I soon came to realize that I too had the Sight, which proved useful as my adoptive father's daughters very clearly resented me and were always striving to undermine my position in the family home. Fortunately they never quite grasped how I was always one step ahead of them, and my adoptive father was not above using (abusing) my talents to make a tidy sum at several bookies' expense. I did not mind; he was a decent fellow underneath it all apart from those magazines he kept in his bedside drawer. And Mrs. Harding who always visited when she thought I was away.

I had more properly used my abilities to monitor my twin, who as I said had an arguably more difficult upbringing despite all that wealth. Two years ago he had reached eighteen and had started at Bargate College in Oxford where he read Humanities; naturally the show-off had to excel and he was already a year ahead in his studies. But then a complete lack of modesty is one of his few failings, along with chronic untidiness, vanity, secretiveness, a lack of trust, a cold and unapproachable facade, a failure to cope with mornings and severe emotional constipation. How I, Sherrinford Holmes, turned out as normal as I am is frankly a miracle!

All right, I like coffee and bacon but I can actually function without them both first thing of a morning!

I suppose that the emotional thing is a bit unfair, as last year saw my twin in love. Alas! it ended badly; the lady's father was a bigot of the first order and he put a stop to the whole thing. But not before.... let us just say that I did not think my own brother had it in him! Just like our mother who had somehow manage to pass him off as the results of a brief visit to her husband when..... seriously, I was surrounded by sex maniacs!

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So back to now, and this pastoral haven on the Sussex Downs. In particular that cottage on the hill that would one day be where..... that was my own brother and considering how much he looked like me (I had allowed myself the luxury of seeing him at a distance last year) I so did not want to think about it! 

As I said earlier, people think that knowing the future means that that is all your problems sorted, but in reality it just exchanges one set of problems for another. For example I knew that Miss Abigail Helston, the owner of my twin brother's future home, was going to die of a stroke five years from now yet I could do nothing to stop that. Her cottage would pass to her sister Betty who would have moved in by then when her own marriage had collapsed, primarily because her unpleasant husband Bill had been sleeping with Betty's best friend from work, Chloris! Betty would stay here until she died, when with no close family remaining she would leave the place to a family friend Mr. Peter Smith, who would die shortly before John Watson found the place. Mr. Smith's son Jubal would be the one to sell it to Sherlock, who would have it specially fitted out... and now I was thinking of my own blood doing That again!

The village itself had some appeal, I supposed, although the snooty landlord at the oddly-named 'Majestic Duck' tavern would not have been quite so proud had he known that all four of his wife's sons were not his, and even less so had he known that three of his closest friends were each responsible for one of the three younger boys (a handsome baker in Lewes was behind the eldest, Humphrey; his wife had only gone in for a flaky pastry and had come out with a bun in the oven!). The elderly Reverend Francis's fiery preaching every weekend was probably to cover his seeing the organist Mr. Oxcross after Sunday service to discuss 'missionary positions' (ahem!), while the unpleasant Hastings-Ryland family who dominated the village were heading for a financial crash which, given their natures, they fully deserved (except for their youngest daughter Sarah who would use the opportunity to depart with the family jewels and Ned the gardener, who had been sowing rather more than just winter kale recently). Also Joss, the young porter who worked at nearby Berwick Station, always walked a rather curious way to work that took him by the Widow Hemsworth's cottage where he always left with a farewell kiss. That was all he was going to get; within a week of his moving in with her, she would sell the place and disappear with all his savings. Finally there was Wedgwood the odd-job man who Mr. Smith had found had been seeing rather too much of Mrs. Smith, and as a result was now seeing the underside of Mr. Smith's back lawn from six feet under.

Village life. Ho-hum. 

My main focus for the next four decades had to be my twin, who was destined for a roller-coaster of a ride that would make his recent troubles seem small by comparison (they were not, as he would one day realize). He was tolerably happy in Oxford although that would soon come to a crashing and unexpected end – but not before he had met the man who would make him famous, and whose love he would come to value more than anything in the world.

I checked my watch and started my walk back to Berwick Station. I had to reach London and cut across to Paddington to catch John Watson who, being a bit of a dreamer, would otherwise sleep through his stop at Oxford and perhaps even miss his first encounter with my twin. An encounter that he would never live down. Perhaps the good doctor deserved to be spared at least that small embarrassment....

No. Not after that utterly vile and terrible thing that he would do to poor Sherlock in 1906. That was – would be – totally unforgivable!

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_Notes:_   
_† His future love's birthday is on April 4th.._   
_‡ October 5th._   
_# September 7th._

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